February 3, 2009:
Once more Israel is taking special precautions to deal with Hezbollah terrorist teams seeking revenge for one of their leaders killed last year. This time, additional security personnel are being assigned to four Israeli legislators (members of the Knesset, or parliament) who are travelling outside the country.

Six months ago, Israel began issuing specific warning to its citizens, to be careful when travelling abroad. The warnings were prompted by Israeli intelligence discovering a Hezbollah effort to kill or kidnap Israeli citizens abroad. This murderous plan was apparently the desire to have revenge for the assassination last year of Imad Mughniyeh (a senior Hezbollah leader responsible for attacks that have killed hundreds of Israelis and Americans).

Back in February, shortly after Mughniyeh had been killed in Syria, Hezbollah began threatening to make attacks against Israeli targets outside of Israel. This has not been done much in the past because Hezbollah relies on fund raising and recruiting among Moslems (especially Shia) living outside the Middle East (especially in the West). But in the past few years, Western counter-terrorism efforts have cracked down on both of these activities. So there is real fear that the furor over Mughniyeh's death will encourage Hezbollah to branch out into international terrorism. The downside of this is increased international efforts against Hezbollah. Logic, however, does not always play with Hezbollah and the Islamic radicals in the Iranian government who provide money and weapons for them.

At first, it was believed that Hezbollah had thought better of going international. Months later, Israeli intelligence began to detect signs that the Mughniyeh revenge operation was on again. Since then, Israeli counter-terrorism efforts have disrupted several Hezbollah murder/kidnap operations overseas. Several other plots are being investigated. Hezbollah has apparently also activated sleeper cells, or sent operatives, to Turkey, Europe, West Africa, Uzbekistan, Thailand and Egypt's Sinai Desert (a popular vacation spot for Israelis.)

Israel cooperates with local counter-terrorism officials, but will go it alone if they believe they can get at a Hezbollah terrorist cell. The Israelis believe that the Hezbollah groups have been ordered to at least murder some Israelis, and to kidnap and get one or more of them back to Lebanon if possible. Kidnapping is very difficult, and it is believed that Hezbollah does not really expect any of its operatives to pull off something like this. Even murder is difficult, especially now that Israeli travelers, and Israeli counter-terror forces are on the alert for this sort of thing.

Christmas is around the corner. StrategyPage needs your help to make it a merry one for our content elves. Because of falling ad revenues and the owners of the site wanting you to have a good experience, the content elves may recieve no gifts from Santa Dunnigan.

What can you do to help the content elves have a merry Christmas? There are three possibilities:

Make sure you spread the word about us. Two ways to do that are to like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter.

Subscribe to our daily newsletter. We’ll send the news to your email box, and you don’t have to come to the site unless you want to read columns or see photos.

You can contribute to the health of StrategyPage. A contribution is not a donation that you can deduct at tax time, but a form of crowdfunding. We store none of your information when you contribute..